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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: EPS who wrote (27906)	8/27/1999 10:45:00 AM
From: Spartex	Respond to of 42771

August 24, 1999 Directories may be dull, but they're important By John Shinal When the computer networking industry gathers in Atlanta next month for the Networld+Interop trade show in Atlanta, one of the least-attended sessions will be a meeting of the Distributed Management Task Force. A handful of audience members, mostly engineers, will listen to a half-dozen other engineers from the DMTF talk about esoteric topics related to directory-enabled networks, or DENs. Yet the obscurity of the task force belies the importance of its work. For when the group publishes its next set of DEN standards by early next year, the way consumers and businesses use the Internet will be changed forever. "The nobs and switches have been defined, now we're working on how to represent those in the network," says Winston Bumpus, DMTF president and director of open standards technology at software maker Novell (nasdaq: NOVL). Although the directory-enabled networking effort began with a push by Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT) and Cisco Sytems (nasdaq: CSCO), whose ad hoc group was folded into the DMTF last year, ironically it is Novell Directory Services, or NDS, that's becoming somewhat of a defacto standard. In DMTF lingo, the nobs and switches are any computing or networking gear connected to a network. The task force's job is to set the technical specifications that ensure that different computer networks can talk to each other. Talking means fully communicating so that every network carrying a packet of data knows everything about the user, application and equipment that helped create it. Corporate information officers are desperate for this information, which will allow them to control access to network applications. For example, network capacity can be dedicated to the sales department at the end of a fiscal quarter so orders can be processed in time. Once the quarter closes, the bandwidth can be used by the finance department to tally the numbers. Then it can be reserved to make sure the CEO's video conference announcing the results goes smoothly. Likewise, if a worker logs in from home, where he or she usually only checks E-mail, the network will restrict access to other applications. "That way you don't have to over-build your network for peak times," Bumpus says. DEN technology also allows data stored in different parts of the same network to be accessible to all gear on the network at all times. That's important to online brokers like Charles Schwab (nyse: SCH) and others, who want to make sure their best customers get first access to web trading during peak times. During the stock market crash of October 1997, Schwab's long-time customers had to wait along with first-time traders when Schwab's network ground to a halt. The reason: the servers, which held customer data couldn't communicate it to the servers that controlled access to its network. Schwab, E*Trade (nasdaq: EGRP) and other financial companies now participate in DMTF standards discussions, Bumpus says. Thanks to the DMTF, a packet can start out on a network run by Cisco (nasdaq: CSCO) routers, travel over remote access gear made by Lucent Technologies (nyse: LU) and end up on a Nortel Networks' (nyse:NT). Internet service providers like AT&T (nyse: T) and MCI WorldCom (nasdaq: WCOM) want that capability so they can offer--and bill for--different classes of service on their networks. "The service providers want to be able to say: 'if you want better service, you have to pay the premium rate,'" says Bumpus. What may result is the Internet equivalent of pay-as-you-go lanes, where Internet users who can afford more expensive access will zoom around the web while others with basic service will be stuck in the virtual toll lanes. Anyone who has a problem with that can bring it up with Bumpus in Atlanta. He'll be the one at the Convention Center in the mostly empty room. forbes.com

To: EPS who wrote (27906)	8/27/1999 12:31:00 PM
From: ToySoldier	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Victor, Its not clear in the article what the agreement between Sandpipier and Inktomi are, but it appears SandPiper is simply implementing Inktomi's Traffic Server (NOVL's ICS competition). Based on the article, these Internet Content Load Distribution vendors are using either ICP or a proprietary version of ICP to efficiently distribute content data to its strategically placed Caches throughout the Internet. The added feature to their service is that they perform Traffic Analysis on the Internet and respond to any degrades. They might even have non-Internet links between their various servers to ensure high bandwidth between their web of Caching servers. The ICP is the open standard for inter-Caching Server data flow. NOVL's caching servers have it as do the others. The choice of product that SandPiper or their competitors use is their choice. It appears that Sandpiper has selected Inktomi. The NDS play in this situation does not immediately stand out and a obvious opportunity to combat the SandPiper/Inkomi agreement, but with imagination and creativity one could find ways that a directory could get involved. For example, if Akamai implemented NDS with say Lucent Cajan swithes, they could potentially provide a value-add Quality-of-Service level of bandwidth via policy control from NDS to the Cajun switches throughout Akamai's web of caching engines. The policies would be centrally controlled via NDS. Akamai could provide stratified pricing solutions based on their customer's bandwidth needs or budget constraints. Right now the bigger limitation to NDS's proliferation in the industry is not the NDS technology itself - its the lack of understanding of the capabilities of NDS and the lack of imagination on how NDS can be used to create new opportunities, reduce costs, reduce risks, and ultimately positively effect an organization's bottom-line profits! PS - where the H?LL did these new Internet Caching companies come up with such stupid names - Inktomi?? Akamai?? Did they pick letters from a Scrabble Bag and were told to make a company name from their selection? I would love to play scrabble with them since I sure ended up on the losing side of their letter selections! hehehe Toy